From the Vault: Before Deepwater Horizon, there was Ixtoc

Unless you’ve been in a cave for the last few weeks, you’ve seen the coverage of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. You may have added such phrases to your vocabulary as “blowout preventer” and “top cap.” As you will see, times have changed, in terms of our interest in Gulf oil spills.

June 3 marked 31 years since the PEMEX oil well Ixtoc I blew out off the coast of Mexico. It created what became the world’s largest accidental oil spill, the largest being a purposeful dump of millions of barrels by the withdrawing Iraqi military in 1991.

Whenever you do research on the microfilm, you must understand that events that are now historically important, may not have been contemporaneously, especially early on. The Ixtoc explosion is a good example, at least in terms of coverage. Of course, news cycles were different in 1979, as were our priorities about what belonged on the front page. We were, after all, trying to beat the Light in breaking news and circulation.

I didn’t see anything in the Express until June 8, and way back on page 10-A:

At least at this point, officials already recognized that the blowout was “the biggest to date in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico” and they didn’t have any delusions about it continuing to leak oil for another three months given that it would take that long to get relief wells drilled.

Yes, the relief wells were drilled, but it took until March 1980 to cap the well. At least this time, it made it on to the front page on March 25 — and near the top:

Interesting is the note that it was “twice as large” as what had been the previous largest spill: the sinking of a tanker in 1978 on the French coast. At 11 million gallons, 1989’s Exxon Valdez oil spill, was not even a 10th of what came from Ixtoc.